Further on the laptops and cybersecurity discussed in my last post, an article in the National Journal gives a lengthy and detailed portrait of the state of U.S. thinking on cyberwar, and in particular the threat from China. Some of the allegations in the story (mainly that the some poeple in the U.S. defense establishment think that a …

You can see video of it on television or on the internet over and over, or you can read about it in newspapers and magazines, but seeing the destruction of a few these so called “Tofu” schools in Sichuan province over the past few days has been mind numbing. That’s particularly true for the one in Dujiangyan, closest to Chengdu, …

Just before traveling to Sichuan yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend in Shanghai who said his parents—both retired—had been asked by the management at the apartment compound they live in to donate to a fund that fellow residents were putting together. They did so happily. Then, a couple of days later, the father was …

According to a recent AP story , “U.S. authorities are investigating whether Chinese officials secretly copied the contents of a government laptop computer during a visit to China by Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez and used the information to try to hack into Commerce computers…..Surreptitious copying is believed to have …

The Chinese newspaper Southern Weekend has a fascinating interview (translated here by China Digital Times) with an education official in Sichuan, where thousands of students were killed by school collapses in the May 12 earthquake. Lin Qiang, the deputy inspector of Sichuan’s education department, told the paper that if education …

There has been a good deal of discussion in the Chinese media and blogosphere (and also on this blog: see comments on my Wen Jiabao post) about comments by has-been actress Sharon Stone in which she says the thought occurred to her that the earthquake was a karmic punishment for China being “not nice” to her “good friend” the Dalai Lama …

I know from the outside looking in it’s easy to become somewhat numb to the death, destruction and dislocation in Sichuan. But it keeps getting worse. This AP dispatch from yesterday is mind blowing. At least 80,000 more people were evacuated last night to avoid potential flood waters that are backing up behind a landslide-produced …

Global Voices Online features a translation of a fascinating interview with Premier Wen Jiabao. A number of things come through clearly. Most strongly of all perhaps is what a natural policy wonk Wen is and why he’s exactly the right man for the frighteningly complex job of clean up and reconstruction after the earthquake. Even though it …

As I write, it is almost exactly two weeks since the Sichuan earthquake (it happened at 14.28 Beijing time). Now that the anguish punctuated by occasional joy of a miraculous recovery is passing, attention is inevitably focusing more on other issues such as how the five million or so left homeless will be fed, housed, treated, educated …

The photo on the right is from the Nanhe Sports Center in Mianyang, where thousands of people left homeless by the May 12 earthquake are living. I like it because it has smiling kids, something that’s been in short supply. Lin, photographer Ian Teh and I went to the stadium to find …

We went to the town of Yingxiu today, (see clip above) where thousands died in the May 12 earthquake. There we spent the one week anniversary of the disaster with a man named Wu Jiang, who had walked into town and was searching through the apartment building where his mother was killed. The rescue vehicles in the nearby military …